


Where Do We Go From Here

by minanoel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Get-Together Fic, Marauders, fem!Marauders, wlw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 20:09:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10556984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minanoel/pseuds/minanoel
Summary: Fem!MaraudersSirius really, really doesn't like Remus' new girlfriend. And why should that be weird-- she's just being a good friend, right?Get-together fic.





	

Chapter One

 

Normally, Sirius loved days like these. It was a warm Sunday evening, and she was sitting underneath a shady tree on the Hogwarts grounds with her friends, caught up in cheerful, aimless banter. She and Jane were still sporting decent hangovers from the night before, not in a head-throbbingly painful way but rather in the sort of lazy, hazy way that necessitated good friends and greasy foods. Her homework was not even close to done, but Sirius had decided quite firmly that she simply was not going to finish it and was basking in the relief of that decision by enjoying the company around her and the chips that she and Jane had wheedled the house elves into making.

Or, at least, she was _trying_ to enjoy these things. Sirius was having a hard time focusing. This could be because of any number of reasons, but Sirius suspected that it was at least in part due to the annoyingly pervasive presence of one Alice Kinnings.

Alice Kinnings, who had only recently announced herself as bisexual— which would be _fine_ , of course, if it did not involve spending every waking second with friend and comrade-in-arms Remus Lupin. Alice Kinnings, who normally struck Sirius as a simply delightful young woman, as long as she was not plastered against her new girlfriend with a frightening degree of enthusiasm. Sirius quite liked Alice, but only where she belonged— that is, quietly ruminating over potions homework a good distance from Remus and the rest of the group. Not sitting with them, chatting idly, and running her her hands through Remus’s thick hair. Sirius frowned and rubbed her temples.

The hangover, obviously, didn’t help.

“Sirius?”

Sirius realize she hadn’t been paying attention for quite some time now, and Petra was looking at her with a questioning look on her face. “Sorry, what?” Sirius responded. “If you want me to pay attention, you’re going to have to make this conversation significantly more interesting. More complimenting these delicious chips I’ve delivered unto you most graciously, less fretting about Herbology essays. It’s bad for the spirit,” she added gravely.

Petra rolled her eyes, but Sirius was relieved to see her confused expression was gone and replaced by one of slight annoyance. “Thank you, O Holiest One, for gracing us with such a feast,” she supplied sarcastically. “Which, I might add, you didn’t make yourself and are only sharing because this is too much for any sensible person to take on.” She gestured to the enormous bowl of chips before them and subsequently popped one into her mouth.

“Nonsense,” Sirius replied, but before she could go on to explain that just how many chips one _sensible_ person could consume in one sitting depended entirely on the bravery of the individual and the size of her hangover, Petra interjected.

“I was just asking how you and Jane got on last night.” It was just like her to want to know the latest gossip, and Sirius thought she detected the slightest trace of envy in Petra’s wavering voice.

Within each other’s company, Jane, Sirius, Remus, and Petra were equals, each sharing a great deal of respect for the strength of their relationship— not that any of the girls would admit it. They complained, celebrated, laughed, and fought with one another in equal measure, and Sirius trusted only these three friends to carry the weight of her sometimes tactless, often outspoken, and wholly unladylike personality. Moreover, they carried it with grace and a loving sort of sternness when Sirius went too far.

Outside, the world was not so kind. Jane and Sirius, the most headstrong of the gang, were admired and respected by all but the Slytherin crowd, while Remus and Petra went rather unnoticed by those outside of their house. Remus didn’t seem to mind at all and preferred curling up with a good book in the library to a wild night out. Petra, on the other hand, got visibly jealous whenever Jane and Sirius got invited to an event or drew the attention of older boys. Last night was a bit of both— several Quidditch players had bashfully approached them a few days back and asked if the two girls might like to join them for a few drinks at The Three Broomsticks. Sirius greeted them with a smile and a wink, which made the shorter of the three lads turn a deep shade of crimson, and before Jane could protest, they both had evening plans.

“It was grand,” Sirius said now, smiling distantly as if remembering. It was quiet for a beat.

“That’s all you’re going to say?!” asked Jane indignantly. “That there was an opportune bragging moment.” In response to the faces of confusion around her, she went on, “Sirius got off with not one, but _two_ , top Quiddich players last night.”

Petra sputtered.

“Which two?” asked Alice curiously.

“Don’t encourage her,” Remus murmured, wrapping her hand in Alice’s and failing to conceal an amused half-smile.

“I don’t kiss and tell, I’m afraid,” joked Sirius, trying very hard to let go of the intimate exchange. Inside, however, she thought that she rather detested Remus’s new girlfriend.

“You do that all the time,” said Alice, oblivious.

“And won’t you tell us about your night, dearest Prongs?” asked Sirius, ignoring her. “Would you call it a success?”

“Alas, but my heart belongs to another,” said Jane dramatically, flinging her head down onto Sirius’s lap and pretending to swoon.

Sirius cackled delightedly. Turning to the group, she explained, “She saw Lyle there and couldn’t speak for the rest of the night. Had to excuse herself early, poor girl.” Lyle Evans had been Jane Potter’s romantic fixation since the girls reached puberty, and despite all their making fun, Jane had yet to tear her eyes off of the funny and handsome, albeit somewhat cranky, young man.

“Don’t be so hard on Jane,” said Remus sternly. Always the sympathetic friend. Still, Sirius turned a bit pink, embarrassed to be called out by the kindest of the group.

“Moony’s right,” said Petra gravely. “It’s not her fault she’s a complete berk.”

The conversation escalated into a rowdy food fight, with insults (and chips) thrown at every end while Alice looked on with confusion. When it died down, Remus and Alice excused themselves.

“It’s just, I promised Alice we might get dinner in Hogsmeade tonight,” she explained apologetically. “And then we’ve got coursework-“

“Is _that_ what you’re calling it now?” asked Jane, wiggling her eyebrows.

“Petra flicked one last chip at her friend. “Have fun, lovebirds.”

Remus grimaced at her friends’ mocking tones but looked quizzically at Sirius, who was looking at the grass without speaking. It was unlike her friend to miss out on an opportunity to mock Remus’s love life, or make a dirty joke, or both. “Okay,” she said slowly, when it seemed clear that Sirius wasn’t going to speak. “Bye, all!”

She wrapped her arm around Alice. A lanky, angular assemblage of a girl, Remus was at the perfect height to put her arm around Alice’s shoulder, while Alice’s arm rested snugly around her girlfriend’s waist. Sirius scowled to herself.

Jane eyed Sirius carefully as the two walked back to the castle. Remus wasn’t the only one to notice the girl’s quietness. “Pads?”

Sirius deepened her scowl. “Shut up. You think you’re so damn observant, do you?” Jane was quiet, so Sirius went on. “I want only the best for our lovely Remus,” she said, attempting to shift the tone into something lighter. “And I think there’s only so many conversations you can have about studying, you know?”

“You’re just annoyed that now you have _two_ friends who are smarter than you,” she asserted, sounding satisfied.

“Hey!” Petra protested. They both ignored her.

“Who said anything about friends?” asked Sirius, but she allowed the conversation to shift into lighter matters as her mind wandered off.

When Remus Lupin had come out to Jane, Sirius, and Petra one year earlier as a raging lesbian (her words), they had all taken one look at her and burst into laughter. Fifteen years old and absurdly tall, Remus Lupin carried herself with the sort of quiet, awkward grace usually reserved for older, bookish men with a cat or two— and, perhaps, a Muggle stamp collection.

She dressed the part, too, although Sirius had to admit that dress trousers, men’s watches, and gold-rimmed glasses looked rather different on her friend’s narrow frame than they would on any older man. _Pretty_ was not quite the word Sirius would use, but Remus had a singular and handsome look, made markedly more feminine by her angled features and the pile of wavy, brown hair piled atop her head.

So. It made a great deal of sense, and it certainly explained Remus’s stilted quietness with the other girls in their year.

But that didn’t mean it had to change anything, or so Sirius thought. She imagined that despite Remus’s announcement, their roles in the group would remain firmly intact. Sirius, confident and pretty, would continue to charm every boy in their year, and then some. Jane would remain unattached, at least as long as Lyle Evans continued to resist her frankly alarming attempts at flirtation. Petra would muster up the confidence to ask a boy out every once in awhile, but knowing her, nothing would last. And Remus, with her academic drive and quiet ways, would be comfortably single.

But after returning the next year after a summer abroad, Remus was… well, _different_.

For one, she had grown an inch or two, which in itself was a surprising feat given that she was already matching the height of the tallest boy in their year. Now, her clothes seemed to fit differently— her old tops rose a little higher on her waist, exposing a bit of her navel and stomach. Her circular, gold glasses had once seemed comically big for her face, but now they fit quite nicely around her crooked nose and serious eyes. She started to wear her curly hair down most of the time, which was… well, a lot to handle, if Sirius was being honest with herself (and it should be noted that most of the time, she really wasn’t). She still went without makeup for the most part, save for a minimal swipe of reddish brown lipstick across her mouth.

And with these changes, she was suddenly and undeniably striking. Underscoring her different look was the fact that Remus had clearly become comfortable in her own skin. A year ago, Remus seemed a bit embarrassed by her more androgynous style preferences and exuded a great deal of social anxiety at every unwanted social encounter. Sixth-year Remus wore her clothes with confidence and seemed content in her own shy nature. Perhaps she finally felt at home with the rest of the Marauders, or maybe she’d had some radical epiphany during her summer in Spain.

Either way, other girls noticed. Of course they did.

It made sense, Sirius supposed, that Remus would find someone. She was loyal, honest, and endlessly kind, a fact that annoyed the rest of the Marauders as much as it helped them. When they were together, Sirius and Jane sought quick and sometimes thoughtless ways to find fun, often allowing for bursts of blatant meanness. Petra never said anything, so it was Remus who always kept them right. Some would call that girlfriend material.

And it made sense that Alice would be interested. Aside from the fact that Remus was _Remus,_ an endlessly fascinating nerd by nature, Alice seemed like a fitting choice. Both Remus and Alice spent a great deal of time in the library, and Sirius often saw them studying together before Remus told her that they were dating. Alice was clearly smart, and although she didn’t share the same sense of humor as the rest of the Marauders, she was friendly. And boring.

It was such a logical choice that Sirius wanted to scream.

She hated when their friendship either changed or was interrupted, and the fact that she couldn’t tell whether Alice was a mere interruption or a permanent intrusion in the lives of the four friends didn’t help one bit. Sirius felt she had a right to feel hurt— it was for the sake of preserving their friendship, after all.

She wondered distantly why Jane and Petra didn’t share her indignation and concluded that it was because they were, in fact, better people. That was fine with her.

The sun was setting on the Hogwarts grounds, and the castle was lit up in shades of red and pink. It was a beautiful sight, diminished only slightly by the fact that Jane was now pelting Petra with what appeared to be small rocks. Sirius grinned at her friends, grateful that they, at least, had not changed.

Much as she wanted it to, that fact did not unclench her heart.

\---

Alice and Remus walked to Hogsmeade in silence. Neither of them were big talkers, so they had quickly become used to these kinds of walks. It was peaceful, Remus decided. It was nice.

She felt guilty for missing her friends’ incessant chatter.

Alice’s mind seemed to have wandered off, as had Remus’s. The two were so alike that both could get lost in thought without much interruption on either end. It was somewhat refreshing for Remus, who was used to constant interruptions to whatever she was working on— whether from Jane’s enchanted paper airplanes (which she had charmed just so that they would repeatedly prod Reumus’s sides as she was working) to Sirius Black drunkenly stumbling into the Common Room at midnight and snatching Remus’s quill from out of her hand before demanding conversation.

Although, come to think of it, Sirius had been very quiet around Remus as of late.

“Why do your friends call you Moony?” asked Alice, breaking Remus’ train of thought.

Remus quietly panicked. This was definitely not something she wanted to discuss.

“I dunno, really. I suppose it’s because they think I’m sort of oblivious to people around me, you know? Moony. They like nicknames.”

There was a pause, and to Remus’s relief Alice was nodding in acceptance. “That’s interesting. Although I don’t know that ‘oblivious’ is the word I would use. You seem, I don’t know… aware. Even when they think you’re distant.” Remus smiled and pulled Alice closer.

“Mm, well. I’m _very_ smart.”

One remarkable thing about Alice was that she always did think rather highly of Remus. No one had paid this much attention to Remus romantically, maybe ever. While Remus’s friends were off having their first kisses or gleefully plotting ways to trick boys into dates, Remus was left feeling out-of-touch and a bit insecure.

She loved her friends with everything she had, but there was something of a disconnect between her and the rest of the group on the romantic front. Sirius, Jane, and Petra were all decidedly straight, which was fine except that they didn’t really understood how uncomfortable and disorienting it was to be a female-inclined female amongst a class full of people that treated that sort of thing as abnormal or strange. Remus’s friends, of course, were the exception to this sentiment, but nonetheless Remus often felt lonely.

Fifth year was possibly Remus’s loneliest year. It hurt to have such loyal, considerate friends when you were desperately falling for one of them. Sometime during the beginning of the semester, Remus realized the reason that Sirius Black made her heart beat so frighteningly fast all the time. And was it such a surprise? She was outrageously charming, and she made Remus laugh so hard she cried on a weekly basis. Sirius was a kind of bold that Hogwarts didn’t know what to do with, and although Remus lectured Sirius about her seemingly endless detentions, she was quietly struck by her capacity for good humor in the face of humiliation. It didn’t help that her friend was incontestably _hot_ , too, all curves and dimples and wild hair.

So it hurt just a bit that when she came out to her friends in light of these newfound feelings, Sirius didn’t bat an eye. Remus expected Sirius to try to charm her either a lot more or a lot less, but Sirius didn’t even seem to register that Remus might be trying to tell her something.

It was all downhill from there. Remus became painfully aware of everyone who would stop to watch Sirius walk by— which was very nearly _everyone_ — and it was excruciating. And demeaning. Sometime over the last summer, Remus decided that she was not going to be another one of Sirius’s disciples. Over the course of three months, she picked herself up and moved on.

In light of her fifth year and its quietly painful memories, it was lucky that Alice had taken such a keen interest to her. After spending the last year feeling undateable and just short of invisible, Alice had shown Sirius that it was okay to need affection every once in awhile— and she gave it to Sirius uncompromisingly. What better cure for heartbreak?

That was why it was so important that Alice not know about the whole “werewolf” thing. If Alice reacted badly, she couldn’t take another emotional blow, especially not now that she had just found someone that tolerated her quiet ways.

They arrived at Madame Pudifoot’s, their dinner spot as per Alice’s request. Their host, a young man who looked just out of Hogwarts, seated them in a booth to the side. Remus would never admit to Jane or Sirius that she liked this place, but she found their abhorrence of all things mushy rather unnecessary. It was nice, every once in a while, to be in a place that advertised itself as what it was— rather than teasing a romantic ambiance, this place overflowed with it, doilies and all. Come to think of it, that was what Remus liked about Alice, too.

“I had a nice day with you today,” she said now, smiling.

Remus smiled back gratefully. They did have a nice day; they met each other for breakfast and had been together since then, studying and talking. “Me too. It was sweet of you to spend time with my friends, I know they can be a bit… off.” Remus wondered why she felt the need to apologize for her mates but didn’t take the comment back.

“I liked them,” said Alice. “They’re funny.”

“They can be twats sometimes, but they’re entertaining twats,” answered Remus fondly.

“Why are you friends with them?” asked Alice. She was curious, not trying to be mean. Still, the words somehow stung Remus.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I just mean that you’re so different than them. They’re so…” Confident? Popular? Remus felt sure that whatever Alice was going to say would hurt her feelings. “I don’t know, cocky.” She paused, embarrassed, adding, “I don’t think they like me very much.”

“Are you kidding? They love you!” Remus was surprised. “Maybe they’re cocky, but they’re not malicious, not really. Jane likes anyone who’s willing to write her Potions essays for her. Petra just likes anyone who’s nice to her. Sirius-“

“Sirius hated me. I could see her looking at me funny all afternoon.” Alice looked… apologetic? “I don’t mean to intrude on your friendship, so if I’m doing anything wrong—“

“No! Don’t say that! Listen, I’m sure Sirius was just having a rough day. I’ll talk to her. I don’t want you to feel unwelcome around my friends,” Remus said firmly. “Please.”

Alice squeezed her hand underneath the table. “Thank you,” she said, smiling. “What is it with Jane and Potions anyway? She asked me to look at her paper, and I swear, that girl couldn’t tell the difference between an Erumpet Horn and a bezoar if her life depended on it.”

Remus laughed, but a surge of anger flared up inside of her. Why did Sirius always have the power to spoil her happiness like this? It wasn’t fair. Last year, their friendship had made it so that Remus could never express the sad and lonely side of having fallen for the girl. Now, Sirius had decided, for whatever brilliant fucking reason, that she wanted nothing to do with Remus.

Maybe it was for the best, Remus decided. She didn’t want Alice to know that she’d had feelings for Sirius in the past. She didn’t want Sirius to say something self-assured and mean to Alice that would ruin everything. Maybe their friendship was drawing to a close.

The thought made her unbearably sad. Was this what growing up felt like?

**Author's Note:**

> End of Ch.1- Any feedback is appreciated, your comments will let me know whether or not I should continue this story!


End file.
